


金継ぎ

by nymphacae



Category: Mumintroll | Moomins Series - Tove Jansson
Genre: "is THIS a Good Coping Strategy????? not that i need coping with anything" - snusmumriken est. 1954, Body Dysphoria, Families of Choice, Gen, M/M, Magical Tattoos, Needles, Trans Snusmumriken | Snufkin, where i continue to lovingly smack snufkin around till he attends therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 08:20:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27670111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nymphacae/pseuds/nymphacae
Summary: snufkin on needlework, belonging, and the people he's determined to love
Relationships: Mumintrollet | Moomintroll/Snusmumriken | Snufkin, Snusmumriken | Snufkin & Everyone
Comments: 3
Kudos: 28





	金継ぎ

**Author's Note:**

> remember that time i implied i had a lot of WIPs to finish…...well……
> 
> also: [take this song for the ride!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_kJa0d37og)

“Alright,” Snufkin murmurs, his smile bleeding into his tone. “You can look now.”

Moomintroll blinks against the noonday sunlight, looking around aimless but excited. Snufkin watches, folding a lip into his upper teeth, as the poor moomin’s face deflates the more he looks around to the mundane meadowsweet fields.

“Um,” he says, eyes still wandering. “Wow. It’s lovely. All this, just for me?”

Snufkin scoffs. “Look _down,_ oaf.”

Moomintroll’s brows lift, but he does as told.

Snufkin watches with hushed delight as his blue eyes unfurl into a sparkling, creeping awe. His body appears to go lax from the surprise.

“Oh,” Moomintroll’s voice evaporates. “Oh, Snuf, wow.”

Somewhere between trying to lug his guileless friend away from company without suspicion or remark, to leading him halfway blind over the valley hills, Snufkin’s dress has been discarded. Only his undershirt— which still hung too low for him to be completely comfortable with — hangs loosely to showcase the patch of skin right above the breast.

There have been plans to do this for a very long time, now; it was only this recent winter that Snufkin found the means to trace the wonder that is Moomintroll down to a singular thing, rather than an abject hook or color in Snufkin’s heart. He’d have been laughed out of the witch’s tent before he sat up in his bedroll and said aloud, “I’ve got it.”

It being: the tattoo of a compass. Right on his heart.

Moomintroll looks as if he wants to reach out, but doesn’t, much to Snufkin’s disappointment. “Does it...hurt?” the kind troll inquires, suddenly troubled.

Snufkin shakes his head. He leaves out how hammered he was, getting it, because it’s not important and it’d make his partner all wrought up.

Finally, contact is made. The places where Moomintroll touches him feels so alive; the sting of the tattoo’s making has resided but a new ache bubbles up in Snufkin’s chest, fluttering wildly.

He fights the age-old desire to flee out from under him, on how he takes him in so tenderly. But that’s the reason he’s here, isn’t it? To look at love right in the face, out of spite.

It’s why he went through all this trouble, of course.

“There’s something else,” Snufkin announces.

Moomintroll abruptly raises his head in surprise. “There’s more?”

Snufkin lightly chuckles in response. Then he instructs, “Stand right here.” He points to his left, beside him.

Moomin gives a puzzled look, but obliges.

“Alright, look again.”

He does; immediately this is followed by a cry of surprise.

“It _moves?_ ” Moomintroll exclaims. “That can’t be.”

“Well, stand somewhere else,” Snufkin challenges lightly.

He watches on, overjoyed, as Moomin rounds him like encircling prey, but his blue eyes are locked hard on the needlepoint in the illustrated compass. Snufkin humors him, looking as freshly-preened as a cat in sunlight, basking in his partner’s attention.

Moomintroll runs out of air soon enough; there’s a circled indent around Snufkin in the grass, where he’d been giddily running about to watch the tattoo move.

Then, after some quiet, Snufkin feels the weight of him press against his back, and then the troll’s arms wrap around his middle, thick enough to completely barricade his lower half in fluffy, white fur.

There’s a contented noise they share, their silhouette merging upon the meadow like clouds; Moomintroll peers his nose down with sparkling eyes to see that the red needle now stays upwards.

“Huh,” he concurs. “What do you know.”

Snufkin gives a small laugh, reaching up to skritch the tips of his ears. “You thought I was kidding?”

“Well, _no_ ,” Moomintroll protests. “But you must admit that it did sound like a tiny bit of malarkey.”

“Well.” Snufkin sounds incredibly smug now; secretly, he’s relieved. “It wasn’t.”

“I see that now,” Moomintroll tightens his grip and hangs his head into Snufkin’s shoulder, breathing deep and charting him out. “Darling...thank you.”

The touch is real. The pain is solid, it exists.

It’s here.

Hearing his voice catch, Snufkin lets him stay there as long as he needs.

* * *

“Oh, dear, that’s so kind of you to ask, but,” Moominmamma peeks over. “Are you sure?”

Snufkin stands; he rubs an arm, looking at her uneasily.

“I see,” she takes that as an answer, voice just above a hum. Her paws circle the plate submerged in water with a cloth, clockwise, rehearsed. “But, I suppose no good adventure started with smart decisions.”

Snufkin dares to tease, “Take Moominpappa.”

He’s relieved that he struck the right chord; Moominmamma’s laugh is a ring of a sweet bell, dripping into his heart like thick honey. “Yes, dear, exactly.”

She shakes the suds off a china plate before passing it to Snorkmaiden’s marmoset friend, who obediently arranges it onto the drying rack for her.

“Will you think about it?” Snufkin asks at some length. His toes dig into the perked end of his boots. “It’d be...I’d be honored, I can say that much.”

“My, my,” Moominmamma says with a twinkle of endearment. “Nothing but the best for my biggest fan, then.”

Snufkin laughs.

Moominmamma turns to him, her eyes creased like dips in velvet, and her face just as soft as it.

“I’d be happy to,” she says, and reaches to seal his paws. “I’ll tell you first thing if I have an idea, yes?”

Snufkin’s eyes brighten.

“Thank you, Moominmamma.”

She takes his cheek a moment, smiles, and turns back around. The place she touches blossoms into heat and flowers.

Suddenly the marmoset flings the entire rack of dishes and the world breaks with a tenfold shatter of dishware against wood. As the awful noise reverberates through Snufkin’s body and back with a wince, Moominmamma patiently retrieves the dust-pan.

* * *

The tides erupt against the rocks beneath Snufkin’s feet; the cobwebs of seafoam catch against the cliffs before they melt back into the choppy waves, and then the pattern is repeated. He likes the sound of the catch before the crash — the baited breath of the sea before it exhales.

“Moominpappa has been down there for a while,” Snufkin surmises aloud. His gaze is set on the incoming grey clouds, and how the soothing tides have become a battlefront.

“Shall we go get him, then?” His companion, Teety-Woo— who had hidden atop his cap for a while before Snufkin noticed his presence— pipes up from behind him. Being a forest creep he doesn’t venture out of those woods often, this exception being purely accidental.

“Maybe in a moment,” Snufkin decides. “I don’t want to interrupt his pearl-diving.”

“Nor his drowning,” Teety-Woo jokes.

Snufkin gives a noise that might be able to pass as a good-natured snort. But he doesn’t know.

Even with the tang of brine and bristling spots of cold water flicking onto his prickled skin, Snufkin discards his shirt and undergarments easily, because there’s no company but the ocean and Teety-Woo: both of whom have never judged what’s beneath him.

The little creature pads softly forward to rest on his hind, getting a peek of Snufkin’s inked chest, and he seems deeply impressed.

“That compass,” he drawls, “it’s for Moomintroll, isn’t it?”

Snufkin nods. He feels the chill of the tides prickle his skin into gooseflesh, but doesn’t cover the tattoos from his friend’s eye.

“What’s the house for?” Teety-Woo asks after a minute, looking at the ribcage.

“Moominhouse,” Snufkin answers. “Moominmamma, to be exact. The lights will flicker on at night, see, when she puts candles in the windows.”

“So they do move,” Teety-Woo says, wonderstruck. “From witchcraft, no doubt?”

“Not my own,” Snufkin admits. “I never had the talent for that sort of magick.”

Teety-Woo lies on his front for a moment against the cold rock, his head catching on his paws. When Snufkin sees his gaze, there’s more understanding in it than he wishes to see.

“You love them very much, don’t you Snufkin?” he asks.

Snufkin isn’t sure why he gets a bit bristled; the creep has always been too curious for his own good, but Snufkin _allowed_ him to venture this time. So there isn’t a single reason he should feel so hot and ashamed.

“I think that’s been long enough,” Snufkin concludes, getting up to stretch his arms above his head. “I ought to go find Moominpappa. No moominian should be underwater for that long.”

“I’ll come with,” Teety-Woo offers, scampering upwards as well. “If you’ll have me.”

“You’re not a bother yet,” Snufkin says honestly. “I’ll be happy for the company.”

“Splendid, splendid!” the creep cheers. “I’ve never been into the sea before!”

“Stay on my shoulders, then, little friend,” Snufkin requests, and Teety-Woo obliges. “How long can you hold your breath?”

Teety-Woo gives a noise that’s half between panic and excitement. “We’ll soon find out!”

Snufkin chuckles, and feeling the gentle pinch of the creep’s claws in the crevice of his collarbone and shoulder, dives headlong into the sea.

The water bends to him, and all the icy chill of the incoming autumn splashes up into his veins. After the initial explosion of cold, Snufkin adapts not as quickly as a moomin might, but in the slow progress of a travelling mumrik: letting the world meld into him as much as he into it.

Iridescent air bubbles travel lazily up to the slices of light above them, and the world shrinks as though Snufkin has been wrapped in the tightest of blankets.

He’s alone with a creep, and the confounds of his skin.

His skin, attached to a body, sewn from earth and sinew. In the very end that’s all it is, it shouldn’t be more complex than that. And yet it is, tying Snufkin to the deep-blue abyss below him like anchors. 

But something in him explodes in a covey of fireworks at this realization. That the indents of him are _his_ , and his alone. And those who touch it have to pass through _him._

Snufkin feels a deep weight in his stomach float beside him, streaming out of his throat alongside the small bubbles, and it disappears, and he feels light. And he’s _happy._

_I’ve got it,_ Snufkin realizes, as he cranes his neck to watch the compass point eastwards, to the shore. _I see. That’s how it is._

He finds Moominpappa with his snout buried between a small cranny of coral-brindled rocks; Snufkin wades smartly against the heartbeat of the water, making him move to and fro as he dives.

Upon tugging his tail for attention, Moominpappa turns in a jiff and quickly seems to realize he’s been out of air for some time now. Although his paws are noticeably empty, Snufkin takes the moomin’s paws into his own, gesturing with his head up to the surface.

Moominpappa obliges, thankfully; he’d put up more of an argument, Snufkin is sure, if their lungs weren’t so constricted.

They break the water’s skin with gracious gulps of air, and it’s like being born.

When he laughs, the whole ocean shakes with it.

“Dear boy, what’s gotten you all nutty?” Moominpappa asks confusedly, but the curl of his furry upper lip shows the same flavor of affection Moominmamma carries. “I don’t look that ridiculous without a hat, do I?”

Through the pelagic roar between Snufkin’s ears he hears Teety-Woo remark, “Might be a symptoms of this ‘bends’ I’ve heard of.”

Snufkin’s laughs dissipate with the waves gently bobbing them all. His eyes are pearls themselves.

“A lighthouse,” he says, then stronger and happier: “A lighthouse! Right at the hip, and connected to Moominhouse with a small line. Like a map!”

Moominpappa catches on.

“There’s an idea,” he admits, nodding. “How grand! A memoir to my journeys at sea, no doubt?

“Hm,” Snufkin replies. “I hadn’t thought too hard about that.”

“Oh,” Moominpappa deflates a tad. “So, it won’t be a eulogy to my great adventures, then?”

“Now, I didn’t say that.”

Moominpappa’s ears rise up with joy, and Snufkin sees his son in him so strongly his heart pricks.

* * *

Moomintroll is already a mound in bed, rising and falling with breaths of sleep, and Snufkin works under the dull light of a kerosene lamp despite not truly needing it; the ladies of the house will bug him about straining his eyes.

He’s never been good with writing; his words all have words stuffed in them, and it’s already a labyrinth enough to get those words _out_. There’s just so much to say, and yet…

Snufkin’s handwriting is poor, as his pen stays on the paper too long and causes terrible blots to smear along the page. But he attempts: _I think it’s time I told you why…_

Folding his lips in, Snufkin retracts his quill and taps it furiously. He glares desperately at the sun in the lamp, who confusedly flickers back.

The ink on him has weight. The ink on the paper has weight.

_It’s what you asked for. Isn’t it?_

He hears the footsteps beforehand, so try as she might, Snufkin can’t be frightened by her silent arrival.

“Hey.” Little My stands at the doorway attempting to cast a shadow that’s longer than herself, but it only meets the tip of Snufkin’s chair.

He looks over. “Evening, Little Mymble.”

She huffs, absently, and won’t meet his eyes. Snufkin notes that her face is smeared with chocolate, and suspects that the fudge in her paws doesn’t belong to her since the slice is too big.

“Just so you know,” she starts, “I think your new tattoos are atrociously tinsley bits of dribble. I don’t know why you’d do that to yourself for some silly unrelated loafs.”

Snufkin can only stare on, as her tone is so stiffly hostile it’s bizarre.

“And I don’t want any part of it!” she says. “So if you decide to get one of me— or dedicated to me, at all, for any reason! — I’ll only be needled about it.”

Snufkin blinks. Something very light and warm trickles from his heart to his head, like sipping Moominmamma’s teas before bed.

His smile is quiet. “I wouldn’t even consider it.”

Little My nods, satisfied. “Good.”

She walks away.

* * *

The reaction is about as smooth as he expected: the living room fills with the cacophony of Little My’s overjoyed squawks, and the attempts of Moomintroll to simmer her down with a good scolding are useless.

He hadn’t been sure precisely what to get her— the poorly-veiled request felt like a deadline, and he’d never been good at those. So Snufkin could only speculate on what she liked, contemplating it for a while on his own terms, before the idea drifted in and he supposed it’d be better than overtly sentimental. She’d box his ears for that, maybe.

No, Little My thrived particularly in gentle misfortune. She struggled to keep her love of family and mischief as separate as she’d hope, so Snufkin would have to slip his care past her with a camouflaged approach.

He decided on her prized teapot with the big sunflower painted on its body. But if one approaches too close, an impish face with a toothy-grin would pop right out from under the lid and give a good spook. Snufkin thought it would bring her great pleasure; he was right, as revealing the spot on his shoulderblade brought a genuine sparkle in her eyes. 

Her laughter is nails on a chalkboard and sounds malicious if one doesn’t know her.

“It’s as atrocious as ever!” she cackles. “By the Booble, you did it! Snufkin, you’ve really done it!”

“It _scared_ me!” Moomintroll cries, bordering a whine. “Look at what you made him do, My!”

“Oh, hush up,” her smirk widens. “Now you’ll get a marvelous sight when you’re courting him.”

Moomin’s eyes turn the size of dinner plates, a telling blush spreading across his nose. “You rotten—!”

Snufkin watches the display with a bubbling sense of adornment, hiding back a chuckle that doesn’t seem to slip past Moominmamma, right across the living-room and hiding behind the massive tree. She smiles back.

As the two argue till it turns to poking good fun, Snufkin shrugs his coat back over him, slipping out for a smoke as nothing more needed to be done.

* * *

The pricks of the needle glow with Alicia’s emerald magick, matching the green of her eyes. It quickly seeps into Snufkin’s skin like dewdrops, and he feels a light surge of something tingling down his bloodstream and into his wrist.

“I’m very sorry,” Alicia says sadly. “I’m not as good at this as Grandmother.”

Feeling stung by a whole beehive on his shoulder, Snufkin takes a moment to hiss through his teeth, then manages, “It’s alright. I wouldn’t want her to do it, anyway.”

Alicia chuckles knowingly, taking a moment to wipe his blood off the needlepoint.

“It’s good practice!” she admits. “I don’t really make my own sigils, so I do hope this one works when the time comes.”

“And it’s for, what exactly?” Snufkin asks.

She hadn’t warned him about what blessing or curse he’d be touted, and in honesty he isn’t educated enough on runes or spells and alike, outside of the tarot. But Alicia doesn’t perform tarot, so getting a print of a card in her honor would be an obsolete act.

“For protection,” she smiles, embroidering his shoulder with the green magical string that functions as a sort of thread. “Against any curses from ill-doing witches.”

“How kind of you,” Snufkin says sincerely.

“It isn’t much,” she objects bashfully. “But there are an awful lot of lousy witches out there, and I don’t think it’d be fun to be turned into a frog while you’re travelling.”

Snufkin hums. “It might be fun.”

“Not for a whole winter!”

“No, you’re right,” he says in favor of her; he wouldn’t tell her about the hung-up’s he’s experienced, and how morphing into a frog isn’t as large a concern to him as other conundrums.

“You’re one of the nicest people I know, Alicia.”

She snorts, touched, unable to mask her giggles behind her hands, and Snufkin is proud of saying the right thing.

It’s a treacherous afternoon; the elixir’s effect wanes and Alicia fears what will happen if she gives him more, so the steady waves of pain leak through and trickle down Snufkin’s left arm. Going from numb to prickly to throbbing, he grits his teeth so his friend isn’t discouraged. The quicker she works the quicker this is done.

Despite the atrocious sores, Alicia is _very_ worthy of being archived. The Moomins tend to still be wary of approaching her as her witchcraft advances, and her eyes grow as empty as her Grandmother’s. But Snufkin never feared her. They’re grateful to one another for that.

It didn’t matter what anyone thought of him for loving her. He was what _he_ wanted.

To distract himself, Snufkin takes notice of the tattoos that she carries, too. Although they’re hard to make out what lies under her layers of clothing, there are intricate lines that climb from her knuckles to the jawline, which are hard to mistake for a trick of lighting. Snufkin is enamored with a little bee tattoo right on her neck, even when doesn’t seem to move.

She’s terribly worried about an infection, and gets more worried when Snufkin insists this wouldn’t be his first experience — travelling witches are often a flip of the coin with their morality, anyway, and he’s encountered plenty of snake-oil tramps for a lifetime.

Her eyes are hard and focused for the entirety of the afternoon, and the trees outside are dipping into blue when she finally sits up, looking proud and depleted.

“There,” she murmurs. “How do you feel?”

Snufkin thinks about it; obtaining these sorts of tattoos always makes him feel a bit exhausted, like all the energy in him is being vacuumed into a particular spot on his body, pulsating with the nip of the needle. This time is no different.

“It hurts a bit,” he admits.

“I’ll get you some stormcloud tea, then,” Alicia decides.

“Alicia?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

Her eyes sparkle, matching the dull, humming glow of her protection sigil, right on the meat of his shoulder. “You’re very welcome.”

* * *

Autumn has come and gone yet again, and outside the world is getting ready to be nestled into the winter’s crystal blanket. Trees are threadbare with slim pickings and the grass is dead, but the Moomins still enjoyed plucking the last batch of apples from their favored orchard, where the tree-spirits knelt down and offered their boughs in exchange for combs to brush their branches with.

Snufkin and Snorkmaiden stand by the kitchen sink, joined at the hip. They silently but fondly peel the red skin of apples into the drain and get the sticky juice running down their paws; Moominmamma promised to make apple butter with their pickings and they’re quite eager for that.

It’s a long moment before Snufkin says, “Snorkmaiden.” He doesn’t look up.

She doesn’t look over, either. “Yes, Snufkin?”

He isn’t sure how to introduce what comes next, so he sets down the half-naked apple he’s holding onto the counter, washes off his paws, and draws a sleeve up to expose his upper arm.

She ceases her peeling to turn a shade of mandarin, awestruck. A floret of trailing flowers, yellow as her fur, trail from his shoulder down to the elbow right at the halocline of pale skin and brown fur.

When her cheeks blush pink in honor, so does the ombre of the flowers bend to her shade.

“For me?” she hedges with a pitched voice.

“It’s the jasmines we picked,” Snufkin answers. “From when we first met.”

Snorkmaiden scrunches her eyes a bit beneath her bangs. “I don’t recall that?”

Snufkin dismisses her with a small grin. “It’s alright. I do.”

She gives a barely-audible ‘oh’, grazing the latticed array of jasmines which flush a bloody magenta. She loves it.

“Oh, Snufkin, it’s so lovely,” Snorkmaiden breathes. She touches one flower delicately with her manicured claw, as if she can feel the silk of the petals.

“I’m glad you like it,” Snufkin says.

“I do! Very much so!” Beneath the frizz of her growing bangs, Snorkmaiden’s eyes hold the brightness of a midday sun on water. Her waterline glimmers. “I didn’t...expect anything like that from you. Not at all.”

_Something about how she says that…_

Ignoring the subtle thorn her words bring, Snufkin cleans his gummy paws in the sink before shrugging on the woolen coat, shielding the flowers from sight.

He catches the glimpse of their tips turning a slight blue.

Regardless, the two return to work as if nothing marvelous has happened. When Snufkin dares to pry approval from Snorkmaiden’s face, out of the corner of his eye, he sees that her smile has deepened her dimples.

But there’s something about the faraway look in her eyes, calculating something, that’s hard to ignore.

* * *

“My toy?” Sniff bends one of his ears. He sounds shrill. “Cedric?”

“Well you whined about it enough,” Snufkin says, half-teasing half-harsh. “So I’d assume this is Cedric.”

Of course, Sniff had to be engraved too. For all their quarrels and complications, he was a figure in Moominhouse. To leave him out of Snufkin’s memoir wouldn’t sit well.

Sniff’s thick whiskers are easy to translate, especially when they twitch so much; he doesn’t want to touch his tattoo piece like the others, just scrunches his brows at it like he’s trying to decipher the shape of something in deep water.

“Remember when you came to me that year after you’d lost him?” Snufkin pries — desperately craving recognition. “And I told you that story, and it was a pleasant night? Even when you kept interrupting?”

“Yeah,” is all Sniff says. He stretches out the vowels like he’s chewing on them.

This was the only tattoo that he feared he’d be hospitalized for, because it _hurt._ The inner section of his arm was already an odd placement, given the fur, but Snufkin would have been lying if he said he wasn’t insanely curious. If it hurt a bit, well...at least the pain was there.

The result: a stuffed dog that stands pink against the brown, smiling with its brass button eyes at his owner.

—Who finally glances up and, strangely, _isn’t_ beaming with joy.

“Why are you doing this, Snufkin?” Sniff asks, face furrowed.

It’s strikingly similar to being burnt, and all at once Snufkin whips his arm away to cover it haphazardly.

“Nevermind, then,” he grumbles.

Sniff is far from dissuaded. “Well, you never appeared interested before! I’m just asking because—”

“I didn’t _ask_ that you ask,” Snufkin snaps; he now very much wishes to be left alone in Moomintroll’s bedroom. “I wanted you to be _thankful_ about it. Everyone else was!”

“But you weren’t _interested!_ ” Sniff repeats, almost wretchedly. “Is this some sort of trick?”

“No!”

“I think you’re up to something,” Sniff says, resolute. “You won’t pull the wool over my eyes this time, Snufkin!”

If there was any sort of diligent and thoughtful rebuttal to that, Snufkin feels that he’s dropped it and it’s fallen into shards on the floor, piercing his heart. That makes him very angry.

All thanks to Sniff who has decided to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Snufkin, speechless, gives a furious huff and swings his legs over the bedroom to go downstairs to Moominmamma.

If Sniff has said anything else, he can’t hear it over the roaring of his own ears and the red-swarm in his vision that nearly crashes him straight into the doorway.

* * *

“I can’t _believe_ him!” Snufkin says to Alicia, to Little My, to Moominpappa, to Teety-Woo, to Moominmamma. To Moomintroll, especially.

“Who does he think he is!” Snufkin says hotly to Snorkmaiden. She’s applying a thin coat of bright polish to his claws, and knows she’s half-listening only because her flowers are a neutral mandarin. “I give him part of my own _flesh_ and he thinks it’s a grand conspiracy of mine!”

Snorkmaiden hums; she finishes the last nail and claps the bottle shut. She turns away to rummage through her bag, purposefully avoiding eye contact.

Snufkin frowns at her, baffled. “Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Concur with me, Snorkmaiden.”

The look she gives him is foreign on her face and he _really_ doesn’t like it.

“You see...” she begins slowly.

That’s all he needs to hear. Waspishly he grumbles, “So you think I’m halfwitted.”

“I didn’t say that!” Snorkmaiden’s tail tussles up all fat, her fur exploding into red like droplets of ink staining her fur. The jasmines, too, become angry.

Snufkin quickly puts his head down, feeling stung.

He hears her sigh.

“I don’t believe you’re halfwitted,” she says at last. “But it _is_ out of nowhere — Remember when I gave you that piercing? You cried all day.”

“Because it _hurt._ ”

“Because you didn’t like anything _sharp,_ ” Snorkmaiden rebukes. “So I _do_ find it very weird that you’re going out of your way to do something you don’t like just to appease us. What are you doing this for?”

Snufkin doesn’t answer for the remainder of the day; Snorkmaiden drops it soon afterward, and she appears quiet with what Snufkin wouldn’t comprehend as _sadness_ until he thinks about it days after.

They don’t speak for a season following that.

* * *

His body hurts with the weight of a thousand needle pricks digging into his skin. He’s no longer a treasure shimmering with secrets and fascinating tales; he’s a pincushion.

The ink gives weight. It bleeds and bleeds till his blood feels black with its poison.

_This is what you wanted. Isn’t it? Isn’t it? Isn’t it?_

* * *

“I can’t _believe_ them,” Snufkin grumbles. He’s clutching his pipe so hard it nearly cracks in his paws like a twig.

He’d probably rip his tongue loose about it more, but there’s a particular jab skin right on his back and it makes him give a pained squawk.

The child behind him flinches backwards. “Sorry! Sorry, I’m sorry, that was my fault, I’m very sorry.”

Snufkin winces, instinctively reaching his paw back to rub at the spot.

Suppose he should comfort the poor thing? Possibly?

...Maybe next time.

“I…” He can hear Toft swallow. “I’d wanted to make you a little drawing. Like the ones you already have.”

Snufkin’s mouth grows dry. “Is that right.”

“I don’t think mine is as nice.”

“You won’t get anywhere thinking that way. Everyone is nicer than everyone at something.”

The child pauses, then sighs.

“Am I bothering you?”

“Not yet,” Snufkin says.

“That’s good,” Toft decides. Snufkin hears the mournful folding of paper, over and over, till it’s the teeniest square.

The child hasn’t decided yet what he’d like to become, but he has a lot of time and Snufkin is patient. He responds to ‘he’, still, and doesn’t give that awful flinch Snufkin would experience as a child when the wrong name was spit from some heathen’s tongue.

All he can offer Toft is freedom, and the proposition to fetch a dress from Moominhouse attic should he want one.

That’s all he can give.

Now they sit on the cold veranda steps, with Snufkin huddled into a smelly lint-speckled jacket that reached his knees, and Toft in a brown pinstriped frock that should have _stopped_ at his knees, but descends down to the ankles.

Just a hair’s length before them, the clouds unbuttoned their blouse of thick grey to shed thick drops of rain onto the valley. It’s been colder, recently; the world weeps as it’s forced to bend to this new chapter.

Something phantom possesses Snufkin to extend an arm out, calling over the shoulder, “Over here.”

Toft scurries over on his battered knees, ducking under the sweater-sleeve’s drapes and fitting right against Snufkin’s ribs. He buckles them in with a sigh and a sweep of his arm round the little creature. They stare out at the rain with matching wistful looks.

“Do you want to see what I drew?” Toft finally asks, very sheepishly.

Snufkin peeks down. “Go on.”

Toft hastily shuffles the paper he’d stuffed into his oversized pocket. Unveiling it, Snufkin cranes his neck to see the scribblings of a ferocious beast, somewhere between a crab and a scorpion. It must have been a pattern Toft thought he saw amongst his imaginations, as it mimics something that’s been untouched and underground for millions of years.

“It’s...a tattoo idea.” Toft bundles his paws together and plays with them fiercely, finding interest in anything but Snufkin’s face. “Y’know, to...match the other ones you had. They’re all very gorgeous, and they move. This one might, too. I don’t know how, though.”

Snufkin battles with will to not do something very uncalled for. To ignore the child, or lash out with cruel words, or worse: to knock him upside the temple like a terrible hemulen headmistress.

He doesn’t _want_ more tattoos. They already give him so much trouble in place of comfort. They move without his permission, and without _reason_ — what was younger Snufkin thinking, getting that damned compass? It doesn’t _help_ , all he knows is that sometimes Moomintroll is west and sometimes he’s north and sometimes he’s south and sometimes he’s in between. He’s not _here_ and that’s what matters.

Moominmamma’s house lights are off, too. Sniff and Little My’s are a waste, and Snorkmaiden’s is too bright and _happy_ because she’s not in the valley anymore.

Moominpappa’s lighthouse, though, has finally turned on.

Snufkin doesn’t know what that means.

His body has just become another oddity he has to lug around, gripping it and shaking it and asking, _’What is it? What do you expect me to do with you?’_

He’s yet to receive an answer.

He doesn’t want more tattoos. It would feel like an overwrite to what’s already left there - to make the Moomins a _history_.

But...

“Do you know how to make them move?” Snufkin asks. “The ink, I mean.”

Toft seems surprised before shaking his head.

“Of course you wouldn’t,” Snufkin murmurs. “It takes a great amount of skill to perform something so intricate and unique. No, I can’t teach you what you want to know. We’ll have to stick with the old fashioned way.”

“That sounds boring, though,” the child complains.

“You have plenty of time to learn the more exciting way,” Snufkin says primly. “And you can call stick-and-poke boring and outdated as much as you like but that’s not going to make the process go any quicker.”

Toft gives a very ugly glare for a child his age, but Snufkin is just as capable of being rotten right back. Whatever look he flashes in turn makes Toft wince a bit.

“Go and get the needles,” Snufkin orders evenly. “Clean them with soap first, please.”

The child nods, scurrying off.

...They’re gone now. The world is damp and dark, and only their imprints left on Snufkin embed any sort of light at all. To tamper with them is sacrilegious. It shows that they were there.

He thinks of pellucid gaps where the tattoos are. Scraping them off and seeing what’s inside of him.

Maybe someday he will be brave enough to tell the little child everything, and leave nothing up to their wild little imagination. Maybe he will be able to peel away all his innate awfulnesses and deep-rooted regrets and the horrid, rancid, barbaric underbelly of worms wriggling beneath the surface that not even Snufkin himself can reason for.

Someday he will tell someone everything they need to know, on why his skin must sing.

* * *

But, with years past, Moominvalley still let its lights on for each and every person that stood on its veranda. The Moomins always leave the door unlocked, so the house is hardly vacant. Only empty.

Moominvalley is just a different place, now. It’s encapsulated with pleasant memories but built on growing.

And on that day of spring when he sees the boat come into harbor, Snufkin goes _running_ into that new world.

The dust is wiped clean, new pictures are set up, the Moominhouse is painted with a blue roof and Moominmamma’s flowers etching up the side of the freshly-white sidings. Snufkin sets up tent mere inches away from the porch, that spring.

People were different, too; still themselves, but akin to a new scent in a room that one can’t quite place. 

Moominmamma painted more, for one, and there was a weight to her art and stance now, a sort of bittersweet momentum to the lives she could have had, and the ones she carried. Equally cherished.

Moomintroll was sturdier, too; his travels at sea left him chiseled but fair and Snufkin found that he fancied that part of him just as much as the Moomin that never quite returned.

Moominpappa would visit from his island with spectacular stories and presents for each family member. His touch lingers with Moominmamma like it hadn’t before; Snufkin watches from the sidelines as they discreetly savor each other’s paws.

Sniff and Snorkmaiden, also, had drifted away from the thread of Moominhouse to find their own family lineages, and came back amicably but with the mutual negotiation that they’d be gone again.

Yes, things changed; but the tattoos still sang with their melodies, untouched. Moominpappa’s lighthouse was dark when he came. Moominmamma’s lights endlessly glowed in the miniature Moominhouse. Snorkmaiden’s jasmines flustered pink as her wedding date approached. Sniff’s little plush dog earned new patches as his children clawed his fluffed insides out. Little My’s face still drove Moomintroll up the wall when it popped out and it cracked her up. Alicia’s sigil brightened when she fancied to send Snufkin a stroke of good luck.

And, even with everything, Moomintroll’s compass never derailed from where he was. Even as Snufkin divorced himself from the memory of a younger Moomin, and they reshaped and rebuilt and relearned. Even then, Moomintroll was endlessly fascinated with how the needle swiveled to his touch; Snufkin would deny he teared up over that.

Toft, as well, was pleased with his drawing - although there was no magick in the odd nuumelite amalgamation the little child seemed to think otherwise, and always made up great stories about its adventures to where Snufkin swore he felt his backside crawling.

Yes, things were different. But the ink had never lost its luster, not once.

And when the bonfire celebrations come around, when departure was close, how they all _danced._

The banter was livened up quickly with the appearance of Manhattan Dynamite that Moominpappa had scavenged on his shorelines. The newest and littlest child Snufkin brought, Tuffe. had asked for a taste, and Snufkin had doubled over in laughter at their reaction to the booze - to where Moomintroll and Moominmamma both stepped in to scold him.

He lost his smock somewhere in the night, and his loves’ prints were available for all to see without shame. Snufkin thinks he danced too, since when he sits down his head is dizzy and his legs feel like rubber.

He remembers through the sparkling haze of alcohol kissing Moomintroll with a lot of awkward teeth, and while Snorkmaiden had slapped him silly over some brazen remarks he’d made, the flowers on his arm bloomed with affection.

The night drawls on, and as the alcohol properly festers in his mind Snufkin feels a weariness grow on his bones. Whether it’s his age, or the common drainage of parties, or neither or both, he falls to the wayside and watches his new life dancing round the fire, sipping his drink and letting the rolling heat of an ending summer douse his skin in a sticky comfort.

Tuffe, being always tucked into his side by lock and key, joins him. Although Moominmamma traded out their full glass of Manhattan Dynamite for iced tea, which they sip through a straw.

Snufkin’s mind is lazily locked onto how Moomintroll threads himself into the crowd with a confident poise, and how when he laughs he’s head tips backwards to show his inner fangs off to whomever he’s gabbering with. The world looks dropped in water and bends to the troll’s magnificent smile.

 _A compass, he was always a compass,_ he thinks distantly. _How the world takes that clever moomintroll in so easily. He’s the center of it all, certainly._

“You got tattoos.”

Snufkin crudely remembers that he’s still at a party, and there’s a nosy child that relies on him very much who’s just finished their juice, sitting right beside him.

Snufkin nods. “Yes, glad they’re still there.”

“That was a joke?” Tuffe asks, which Snufkin confirms with a nod and the tiny beast looks remarkably pleased with themself.

He takes a very long sip of his whiskey to where he must breathe through the nose, holding the alcohol in his mouth to where it begins to feel like acid.

“Why’ve you got so many?” asks Tuffe.

Snufkin expected the question, so the drink goes smooth down his throat without a sputter of alarm. He lets Tuffe’s inquiry sit with him a moment, flipping it over and over like a smooth pebble through his paws.

At last he smacks a lip and settles the glass back into his lap. “Dear one, I’ll tell you,” Snufkin decides at last, “but only because I still can’t trust what I’m able to say with anyone else.”

Tuffe nods enthusiastically and leans in, wide-eyed.

Snufkin keeps his unfocused stare hardset on the bustling campfire, where the others stand hardlined in golden strokes of light. The Moomins dance careless and without a drop of shame; their bumbling, tipsy songs float into the summer air like the embers meeting the moon.

Snufkin doesn’t deter his gaze once. “There was a winter when I woke up and couldn’t see my paws.”

Tuffe starts sharply, as though they’d been struck.

Their reaction summons an airless chuckle from him. “Yes, that was my face as well, I’m sure. I couldn’t have been much older than you, so it was very scary.”

They shake their head furiously, as though they can’t even grasp it.

Snufkin continues, “I was very alone, I hadn’t met the Moomins yet and there was no one that could help me. So as is the case with invisibility, you know, it can only get worse.” He knots his paws together on the cusp of his knee, soothing its bouncing. “I was hoping it would be like the critters that go invisible just to be left alone, you know. Like the shrews, or the fish that don’t want to be eaten. But it wasn’t.”

He almost elaborates but he cannot; that time as a trembling child with an oversized hat, calling for help, fills his mind with a grokely, bone-chilling ache.

“It wasn’t,” he repeats after a moment, “And it’d taken some time before I nursed myself back to being visible. Snorkmaiden won’t say, but when I first met her I was still having trouble getting my feet and tail to reappear. I’m grateful to her and the Snork for that.”

Tuffe is frozen stiff as the streamwater of this locked-up tale is released; it may be too much for any creep their age to witness but Snufkin knows that someone _must_ know.

“I never had a reason to return to a body I never even asked for,” he sighs. “That was also very scary. I was happy with the Moomins, yes, very happy...but I was also worried. I didn’t want the next time I felt rotten to be the final straw, because I wasn’t sure I’d get it back.”

“But…” Tuffe fishes for explanation. “But you’re here.”

Snufkin smiles. “Yes, I’m still here. But I wanted to make sure I stayed here.”

“So you got tattoos?”

He thinks of a way to answer that, but, again, cannot.

Instead he flits sidelong to see Tuffe has unceremoniously dropped their glass of ice and has their eyes set on Snorkmaiden’s flowers. Neither can tell what shade of color they are against the stark-orange of the fire, but it’s obvious from her nearby guffawing at a joke that she’s happy.

“You can feel them,” Snufkin murmurs tenderly. “They won’t bite.”

Tuffe still hesitates, but takes his word for it. Snufkin feels their small touch wander freely along their newfound canvas.

“...There’s a lot of things about me I can’t understand yet,” Snufkin says. “Maybe I never will. Creatures like us have got such a big hole scooped out of us, yes?”

Tuffe nods.

“But…” How to put this. “Having these reminders, that there’s still so much good even on such bad days...I have to revisit that more often than I’d like. And tattoos, well, they’re real. The people that inspired them, they’re also real. They have to be, or else...why would I have put them there?”

“Why?” Tuffe repeats. They can think of nothing definite nor spectacular to ask, being too small for something that felt so heavy.

Snufkin answers anyway.

“To know that it’s there,” he says quietly. “To remember there are things I want to return to.”

Tuffe continues their mapping of the ink; Snufkin feels the tips of their baby claws but it’s not enough to hurt. They retract and begin anxiously kicking their feet as the party goes on.

As the autumn bonfire rages on, Snufkin feels a small weight lean against his arm, and he is glad for the burden of it.

**Author's Note:**

>  **金継ぎ** — _kintsugi, meaning "golden joinery". an age-old japanese method of taking damaged ceramics and mending their broken areas with gold._
> 
> (i want to give a very special thank you to my dear friend for coming up with the idea that snufkin gets a compass tattoo dedicated to moomin, and therefore inspiring this entire fic!!)
> 
> be sure to leave a comment or kudos for ur stay as we’re founded by viewers like you. thank you


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